


I Meant To Do That

by RunWithWolves



Series: 30 Days of Cupcake [9]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Letter, got some angst folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 18:52:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8113603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunWithWolves/pseuds/RunWithWolves
Summary: Laura had all kinds of things that she had planned to do for Carmilla: take her on a date, call her on late nights when Laura was stuck at the office, send her flowers. Despite her best intentions, it's Carmilla who is the romantic and with the Dean around Laura is running out of time. So she's determined to give Carmilla what she can. No matter the cost. Carmilla deserves so much more than what Laura's given her.





	

Laura rubbed her hands together then ran her fingers along the edges of the dress that Laf had borrowed from the theater department. Perfect vampire bait attire. She craned her head, exposing her neck to the camera in a way that she hoped was seductive. 

“That’s so not working, frosh,” Laf said. They fiddled with Laura’s cell phone as Perry buzzed around them, putting everything into place. 

Laura dropped the seduction eyes and took a deep breath. “Alright. I think we’re ready for this, right? We’ve got the dress.” Laura said, “Team of angry zetas ready when we call. Check. Laura Hollis, vampire bait extraordinaire? Check. Bonfire date. Check. Spatula if necessary for defence?” She ducked under the desk and pulled the spatula out, “Check.”

“Wow. You’re going to be one fun date,” Laf said.

Laura wasn’t sure exactly what they were doing to her phone but was too busy getting ready to seduce a vampire to care, “What do you mean?” Laura said, “Of course I’m a fun date! I’m so much fun. Girls never had any complaints. I mean, there were only like two of them but I am a good date. I am.”

“Sure,” Laf said, “You bring improvised weaponry on all of your dates? Way to woo them, Hollis.”

“I am excellent at wooing!” Laura said. 

Laf just grinned at her.

Perry put a hand on her shoulder, shooting Lafontaine a look, “I’m sure you’re very good at dating when you actually care about the girl. However, this isn’t exactly your standard date. You don’t actually want Carmilla to fall in love you. Now,” Perry clapped her hands, “let’s forget about all of this vampire-nonsense for a moment and help set-up for the party.”

She gently shoved Laf out the door as Laura followed. Laura’s footsteps only paused when they passed by a small shop with flowers in the window. Her fingers lingered on a rose.

“Big date?” The shopkeeper called, “Flowers are always a way to show love!”

Laura hustled away, flower left behind. 

#

Carmilla stretched as she stepped back into their home base of the library, popping her shoulder and frowning at the tiny scorch marks in her her shirt. She looked over at the nest of blankets in the corner and said, “If you start with me on the coffee table again then you can start getting your own snacks. There’s absolutely nothing I could do about tiny murderous dragons. If you wanted the coffee table safe, then you were welcome to help.”

She stripped off the shirt, not caring if Laura saw her. Even better if she did. Laura had spent days doing nothing but curling up in a pile of blankets, watching far too much netflix, and insisting that nothing terrible was happening on campus.

They all coped in different ways but this was getting ridiculous. 

They had to do something about her mother and moping wasn’t helping. If a little skin was enough to get Laura fired up, so be it. 

So Carmilla took her time, choosing between the two remaining shirts that the library had left her. Black or black. At least it got the colours right. Her ears strained into the darkness of the library, trying to pick up a hitched breath from Laura over the science gingers semi-coherent mutterings in the hallway next door. There was only silence.

Frowning, she slipped on a shirt and walked over to Laura’s nest.

It was empty for the first time in days.

Or almost empty, for deep in the nest where Laura had always curled up was a simple envelope. On the front was the word, “Carmilla”.

#

Carmilla, 

I always meant to buy you roses. 

Maybe that’s sappy and cliche and if I’d ever gotten around to giving them to you then you’d probably have rolled your eyes. Except I bet there’d be a little smile on your lips. I bet I’d come home to see you lightly touching the petals when you thought I couldn’t see. I bet, years later when flowers long should have died, I’d find one pressed between your pages. 

So know that I meant to buy you roses. Does that count for anything?

Because while I’m romantic kryptonite and a hundred kinds of horrible at being a girlfriend; you’re not. You’re every kind of romantic and special and thoughtful. 

Even when I didn’t deserve it. You brought champagne to a date with a roommate who was set on kidnapping you. You made me hot chocolate and kept your blood in the back of the fridge where I couldn’t see it. You picked me a flower while we were fleeing through the woods. Swept me off my feet and made me a bed in a hayloft. You made mixed tapes of songs that I’d never heard, found records that should have long faded to time, and taught me how to waltz with only the stars watching. You left books you thought I might like on the dresser and made sure that my favourite kind of cookies were always in the house. 

Don’t get me wrong, Carm. I’m done with rose coloured glasses. You’re sarcastic and lazy and not-at-all perfect. Nobody is. But maybe you were perfect for me, if I’d just stopped for five seconds and looked at you. Really looked at you. Listened for once in my life to what someone else had to say.

You kept protecting me when I was so stupid that I couldn’t see my own mistakes. You betrayed your family for me. You died for me. You were captured for me. You lost everything for me. 

For me. 

And you tried to keep it all hidden so that I doubt Perry and Laf could name a single romantic thing you’ve done. You didn’t do it to look like a good girlfriend or get brownie points. 

You just did it. Like it was as easy as breathing. 

I couldn’t even buy you flowers like I meant to. By the time I realized that I hadn’t, it was too late. Too late to buy you flowers. Too late for any of it. 

You came for me anyway. 

I can keep your secret, it’s the least I can do, but I want you to know that I know. I know that you’re a romantic. And you were good at it. I just had such illusions of what romance was that I took it for granted. 

Took you for granted. 

I’ve always known you’re a romantic and I always meant to buy you roses because I knew what it would mean to you. Yet I never seemed to find the time. I could say that I was busy with fish gods and boards and friends but those were all the wrong things. I couldn’t find five minutes to buy you flowers?

You found time to read me poetry. I found time to listen. Late nights spent in our room, the door locked so that JP and Perry and Laf couldn’t come in. Remember? Sometimes I think that’s all I do. You’d just sit on the bed and let me snuggle into your side, reading rhyming words until I fell asleep. Words that matched the cadence of the breathing that you only bothered with because my head was on your chest. Sometimes, after you were gone, I’d curl up with a pillow and pretend it was you. But it never breathed. 

Never ran its finger softly over my hair while poets were pulled forward through time on your tongue. 

I meant to do that for you. To help you fall asleep when the monsters came. I know that I’m not much of a shield from everything that goes bump inside your head but I was willing to try. 

Yet I never did. I got up in the morning and left you lying in an empty bed until you came downstairs to find me.

You always did. 

Carm, you deserve so much better than that. You deserve everything I meant to do and never did. Because I’m Laura Hollis and I’m the world's biggest fool. I’m the girl who kept giving you maybes and somedays and tomorrows and I thought we’d have my whole life to figure it out. 

We didn’t. 

Know that I meant to buy you roses. Does that count for anything?

Does it matter that I had so many dreams that never came true?

I meant to write you cards. I was going to write little notes about everything you meant to me and leave them around the house in the places only you lurk. Those little nooks and crannies that no-one else bothers to notice where you pull yourself away from the crowd. I meant to leave notes there so you’d know, that if you wanted, I wanted you there with me. 

I meant to take you on a date. I never did. You took me to solariums and hay lofts and a hundred foreign places with your words painting a picture in my mind. I think, I’d have gone for the cliche because I don’t know if you’ve ever been properly wined and dined. A table for two and the softest candles. Vanilla. Because that’s your favourite. 

Have you ever been wined and dined, Carm? Properly woo’d? Romanced? I meant to. I wanted to. Everything traditional just for you. My first time and yours. Instead I let you woo me and chase me. 

You deserve to be romanced. You deserve it more than anyone. 

I meant to do that. 

There’s this little place in my hometown and I’d take you there. I’d knock on your hotel door and bring you roses and I’d let you complain all you wanted just so that I could watch that little light in your eyes grow with every sappy gesture that you called pointless.

I meant to call you. Once we got out of here, I always pictured that we’d find some crappy apartment in Paris and I’d get stuck with a dull entry level job that would have me working all kinds of overtime. I meant to call you at like 11 at night. Just to talk. Just because I wanted to hear you voice while I was filing or whatever. We’d talk about nothing and it would be everything. Every atom in my body would ache to just go home so I could curl up beside you again. 

Yet just your voice would be enough to feel like home. You’d call my bosses idiots and I’d laugh. My night would be infinitely better just because you were in it. I could tell you how much I missed you and that I couldn’t wait to see you. Just to remind you that I was thinking of you. 

Always you. 

I meant to write you letters. I’d have bought postcards from every place we went on our worldwide travels and then mailed them to you without you knowing. Then, when we came home, you’d know that I was thinking of you even though you were right beside me. 

This is the best I can do. 

You deserve so much better than this. 

I meant to write you poetry. It would be clumsy and probably full of rhymes but I’d mean every word of it. Your mouth would twitch when you read it and you’d pretend it was good. Later, you’d tell it was crap.

But you’d love it anyway. 

I’d keep writing it. Keep writing and writing because you are the kind of person that poets write words about. A dichotomy and a mystery. A lover and a fighter. Darkness and light. Beauty and danger and starlight all mixed into one. Infinite and yet so full of fragility. 

I meant to do it all. Buy you flowers for no reason and make sure the fridge was full of blood bags and give you the world. I meant to give you everything that you deserve. I meant to give you everything that you ever gave to me. 

I meant to do it but intentions don’t count for anything. 

You can’t make a memory on intentions. 

I meant to tell you that I loved you. 

I did. I do. I suppose I am. I meant to say I love you at a time when that was an okay for thing to me to say. It’s not but it’s all I have to give you. I don’t have time for postcards and candle light dinners and poems. So I have to tell you now that I love you. I didn’t really know what love was and I didn’t believe you could fall in a month and I still don’t really know what love is. 

But I know that my insides ache with holes that you were meant to fill and I know that when I close my eyes all I see is you and I know that nobody else makes hot chocolate quite as good. I know everything in me withered when you were shot and that the hurt of you coming back after we broke up was the most beautiful pain I’ve ever felt. 

Mostly, I know that you deserve better than my love. The broken thing that it is. 

That convinces me more than anything. I love you because I want you to find something better than me even though all I want to do is hold you tight. 

I still don’t know why I love you but I just know I do. 

I meant to love you properly. 

I meant to give you all of it. One day. Then one day never came. I thought we had time. 

I never gave you flowers. The best thing I ever managed was to give you was a second chance at life, a sword clattering to the floor when I was the reason it was there in the first place. I meant to do more. 

So I am. 

Hold on to whatever love I could give you Carm. I meant for it to be so much more and I can only hope that my wishes meant something. Anything. I meant to love you right. Hold onto it for as long as you need. Hold onto it until you find someone who isn’t made of ‘meant to’. Who does all of the things that I always intended. 

Who can give you what you deserve. That person isn’t me. I meant to but you deserve more than that. 

My love is broken and full of dreams and so little action but I want you to have it. Have all of it. I’m trying to make it as big as I can, to sustain you as long as possible. Until you can find someone better than me. Take it, Carm. Please. 

I asked the library to help me make it a little bigger. One less meant to.

The only thing I ever gave you was that second chance of life but that’s not done. I refuse to leave it as a meant to. I will not write that I meant to give you your freedom. So I’m taking care of it. 

Love, Laura

#

There was a poof and a giant bouquet of roses appeared on the desk next to Carmilla. The card said:

Be happy, Carm. 

I meant to do that.

**Author's Note:**

> One of the most tragic things in s3 is when Laura says, "you deserve better" because she's referencing that Carmilla deserves better than for Laura to kiss her like that. She's saying that Carmilla deserves better than Laura. She can believe in Carmilla's goodness but not her own. That punched me in the chest. 
> 
> Thank you for all of your kudos and comments and [tumblr stop-ins](http://ariabauer.tumblr.com/) cupcakes. I didn't have much time today so I hope this one is still okay for you.
> 
> This is the ninth story of '30 Days of Cupcake' where I'll be posting a unique Carmilla fanfic every weekday for 30 days. Stay stupendous. Aria.


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